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Sobel Wiki
Welcome to Sobel Wiki An encyclopedia of Robert Sobel's alternate history For Want of a Nail that anyone can edit! For Want of a Nail For Want of a Nail: If Burgoyne Had Won at Saratoga is one of the classic works of alternate history. In it, business historian Robert Sobel wrote about an alternate world where the American Revolution was unsuccessful. However, instead of writing a novel set in an alternate timeline, Sobel chose to write a history book from an alternate timeline. The result is a history of an alternate North American continent from 1763 to 1971, including all the scholarly apparatus of an academic work: footnotes, a bibliography, three appendices, a map, an index, a preface by the author (an alternate Robert Sobel), and a critique by Professor Frank Dana, a hostile historian. The book's point of divergence from our own history is a British victory at the Battle of Saratoga in October 1777, leading to defeat for the American colonists in the American Revolutionary War, which is known in the alternate history as the North American Rebellion. Afterwards, the defeated colonies are reorganized into the Confederation of North America, a dominion of the British Empire that gradually gains complete autonomy over the next fifty years. Meanwhile, the defeated rebels leave the colonies to settle in northern Mexico, where they found the State of Jefferson. In 1819, Jefferson and Mexico merge to form the United States of Mexico. For Want of a Nail then follows the histories of these two North American nations as they interact with each other and with the rest of a changed world, down to the time of the book's publication in the early 1970s. Like any history book, For Want of a Nail ''references thousands of people, places, events, and organizations, most of which are unique to the alternate history it describes. The Sobel Wiki exists to serve as an encyclopedia of this richly-detailed alternate world. Although most of the articles are written from an in-universe point of view, they can also contain italicised information from the point of view of someone in our world (IOW). For All Nails In 2001, a number of alternate history enthusiasts at the soc.history.what-if Usenet newsgroup (including Sobel Wiki creator Johnny Pez) joined together in the For All Nails project: to extend the Sobel Timeline past its original 1971 terminus, and to correct the various errors, contradictions, and improbabilities that ''For Want of a Nail suffers from. The result was a series of over 350 Usenet posts, mostly narrative vignettes of life in the Sobel Timeline, but also including newpaper and magazine articles, letters, and vitavision transcripts. Dan McDonald, one of the participants, began archiving the posts at his website, but real life intervened, as it so often does, and the kebe.com archive remains incomplete. In order to remedy this deficiency, the Sobel Wiki includes a second archive of For All Nail posts here. Featured Article The 1923 Grand Council elections took place on 16 February 1923, for the purpose of choosing the Seventeenth Grand Council of the Confederation of North America. The elections returned a Liberal Party majority of 81 seats, the Liberals' first Grand Council majority since the 1883 elections. The 1923 election campaign took place against the backdrop of the malaise of 1916 - 1924, which Sobel describes as a rebellion against the idea of progress that dominated the western world, and a desire among its opponents for "a more simple life." The rebellion against progress centered around the League for Brotherhood, which had been founded in May 1920 by Howard Washburne of Southern Vandalia. Washburne had originally intended for the League to serve as a nationwide organization that would, through capitalist and republican paths, obtain a greater share of jobs and power for the C.N.A.'s Negroes. The League attracted other radicals and reformers who had their own agendas, and who saw it as a vehicle for achieving them. These were men and women who rejected capitalism and republicanism, and in some cases even found the traditional radical followers of Neiderhofferism to be irrelevant. The new radicals rejected urbanization and industrialization, which they called "the suffocation of the cities and the horrors of the factory," and called for a return to "a more natural way of life." Through sheer weight of numbers, these radicals were able to take control of the League in late 1920. By the summer of 1921, the League numbered seven million members, most of them dissatisfied middle-class whites and intellectuals. The political leaders of the C.N.A. did not know what to make of this great reformist wave. Governor-General Calvin Wagner, the leader of the People's Coalition, once said that "This is a business century, and we are a business country." However, the new radicals had come to reject the values of that business civilization. There were major riots across the C.N.A. in the summer of 1922, the worst since the economic and social chaos of the Bloody Eighties. (read more) Other AH Wikis *Eric Flint Wiki *Harry Turtledove Wiki *S.M. 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